Having long followed the development of Silent Hill: Origins (SH: O), I’ve seen it evolve from a Resident Evil 4-style action-horror game into something resembling the original Silent Hill series. At one point, nearly the entire development team was laid off (most notably the art director), making for an interesting development cycle that left me quite cautious about the end product. When the game was finally released for the PSP, I admit that I didn't spend much more than an hour with it. I was so turned off by the game that I just aside for my wife, who is a fan of the series. Considering that my initial impressions were so poor, it's difficult for me to accept that the game is actually pretty decent.
Honestly.
SH: O is a prequel to the first Silent Hill (SH1), much as how Silent Hill 3 is a sequel to the first. After all the previous focus on the story of SH1, with Silent Hill 3 and the cinematic retelling of the first game, the whole affair is starting to smell rather like a dead horse. Based on my initial impressions from the PSP game, I felt as though SH:O was beating that corpse; perhaps this has something to do with much of the atmosphere being lost on a smaller screen. Either way, Origins manages to survive through what should have been a trainwreck of a game.
The main character this time around is Travis “Bloody Fists” Grady. Travis must have been in his fair share of bar fights, because he's a damn good pugilist for an otherwise ordinary trucker. One night while on his route, he takes a shortcut through Silent Hill when a female darts out into the road ahead, leaving him with hardly enough time for him to put on the brakes. When he comes to a stop, the mysterious woman is nowhere to be found; in her place is a strange ghostly young girl, who leads our fearless trucker down a foggy road into Silent Hill.
Within the first hour of the game, the player is introduced to nearly every major player from SH1, including some of the staple bad –guys, like the sexy-dead nurses. The focus of the tale remains on the enigmatic Alessa Gillespie, as it has through the other games set within the same story arc. By creating a prequel, the writers took the opportunity to clarify a foggy back-story presented in SH1 while also attempting to tie in many of the overarching themes from all of the other titles in the series.
Origins hits on all the staples of narrative and storytelling preached by SH1 and 2, but somehow manages to come out mostly untainted by either. While the cover story is that of the first game, the more interesting exposition is told through Travis’ dealing with his inner demons and tormentors much like James in Silent Hill 2. Sometimes the game seems to be inspired so much by its predecessors that it gives the appearance of being completely uninspired by any kind of originality. Fear not, though, as it does eventually pull free from the weight of its forefathers.
The narrative flows much like the level design, traveling in a serpentine path that unlocks only as you figure out each mystery. On the surface, Travis' story is about trying to get out of town; he no longer wants to be in this crazy upside-down world. On his way out, things get progressively worse, and in the fashion of SH2 the character passes through many internalized ordeals. It's a good way to tell a story and a particularly bold approach for videogames, but unfortunately the writers of Origins were a bit heavy-handed at times and underestimated the shock of pulling the rug out from underneath the players only at the very end.
While the story and narrative flow of the game are mostly done well, they represent only half of the problem I had with my first experience. After building up the strength to go back through the first hour, I decided to make mental notes of the lessons the game brutally taught me for survival. Most importantly, I learned to make sure to hoard all items and use them only when explicitly necessary. This is more of a comment aimed at the weapons in the outside areas, which don't last nearly long enough and won't respawn, unlike the enemies which do. One of the more irritating additions to the gameplay is the collectible and breakable weapons system. If you were to use the nail-laden 2-by-4 from any other Silent Hill game in real life and beat up a bunch of sexy-dead nurses, then yes, that item would break; however, videogames are not about replicating reality, and especially not the things that are a pain in the ass in the real world.
In SH:O, a scalpel will break once you’ve used it on an enemy three times. At this point, you have to clumsily stumble through your inventory to equip another weapon which may last until the monster is defeated, or else you’re left with the more likely option of duking it out. In an attempt to make the game more immersive by implementing real-life issues and complication, SH:O ends up backfiring and coming off even more “videogame-y.” If I were to stab someone with a giant meat hook, it wouldn't just twang into oblivion after hitting someone ten times; in real life, that meat hook would bend out of shape and be rendered useless for anything other than improvised brass knuckles beyond the ten hit mark.
On the other side of the coin is that the combat is now much more intense and threatening. When I hear the ominous sound of static and my screen begins to cover in film grain, I panic a little. I slink around by the walls and duck down alleys and into rooms rather than confront everything. It's intense, something that's been missing from many of the Silent Hill games.
Along with combat quibbles there are also quite a few bugs in the game. While none break it, they are quite irritating nonetheless. Some of the more frequent ones are contrast issues, item pick-up errors, and audio bugs. Origins was originally designed with the PSP screen exclusively in mind, and as a result, the developers locked the brightness level of the game, since every screen was intended to display images exactly the same. Most televisions do not display at the same levels, and the contrast is far too dark for most of the game, even for an experience that's supposed to be creepy and dark. Knowing this when making the port should have led the developers to introduce a contrast or brightness adjustment bar, but they didn’t. Aside from not being able to see your surroundings, the game will occasionally put items you’ve collected into your inventory so quickly that you don't know what you received. This is not only irritating, but also time consuming as the player is now forced to rummage through their inventory to figure out just what it was they picked up.
The worst bug is also somewhat creepy, and one I'm not sure I would have noticed without playing the PSP version: rather than looping when an ambient music track is completed, the music will just stop. This makes for some very eerie situations where, when walking down a hallway, the creepy, dramatic and bass-thumping music will suddenly stop, leaving the player wondering if something is going to happen. When the music returns after moving to another area, it becomes all the more startling and jarring. On the plus side, I believe that this quite accidentally leads to a better eerie atmosphere, which is well-suited to the game. Origins also has sound effect errors where a random (and often inappropriate) effect will sometimes play, or more commonly, just not play at all.
Overall: 7/10
When all is said and done, the Silent Hill: Origins is pretty good. For what I imagine was an attempt to combine the main story arc with themes from all other games while including visual elements from the film, the game should in all rights have ended in disaster. Curiously enough, it doesn't. A well thought out story and subtext shines brightly through the aping of many of the other Silent Hill games’ clichés. What most people who are professionally involved with Silent Hill constantly fail to realize about the series is that what made the second game most people's favorite wasn't that it took place in Silent Hill specifically, nor was it the exceptionally deep and introspective narrative. No, it was how much it diverged from the first game in its story (though, you know, the other two things help). Silent Hill games don't need to be tied into the first game, as it has and always will work better as a Twilight Zone situation: one that just shares the bizarre nature of the town and the deeply troubled people inside the story. I hope that developer Climax uses Origins as a learning experience and takes Homecoming (previously Silent Hill V) into the Twilight Zone.
